


All The Rest Is Water

by whereimgone (orphan_account)



Category: Jonas Brothers
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:48:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/whereimgone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Man, you're forgetting," Nick says, reaching out to rub Joe's neck. Joe turns as much as he can to kiss the nob of Nick's wrist, nipping a little. It makes Nick's voice going shaky when he finishes the thought, "I'm good at this."</p><p>Pulling Nick down into his bed, Joe thinks that's the crux of the problem right there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Rest Is Water

They get two weeks off and spend them in LA. Going home shouldn't be a vacation, but what are you gonna do. Joe tells himself he's going to play this one by ear, but he knows that's probably the fear talking. When the door creaks open the first night and a wedge of yellow light spills in it makes Joe think about alien abductions, being freed from the stultifying dark by unearthly forces.

Nick says, "Hey."

"Hey." Joe sits up, fumbling his glasses on, the covers sliding to his lap. "Come in already."

Nick smiles - that smirky, narrow-eyed thing he does. Joe's still not sure where it comes from. Nick shuts the door behind him, and Joe clicks on the lamp on the night stand. It makes Nick look washed-out and grainy like a '70s movie, standing next to Joe's bed in boxers and a white Hanes undershirt. The fit makes Joe think it was originally Kevin's. Nick's hair is a disaster and Joe has trouble swallowing.

Joe keeps his voice a raspy half-whisper. "Can't sleep?"

Nick shakes his head, shrugs. "Didn't really try." It's not that he's nonchalant because he isn't; Nick has that look on his face you get when you wish you had pockets. But he's standing quietly confident. Nick is never anything less than capable and that might be the most compelling reason people are drawn into his orbit, even when he was just a kid. Not that he's not a kid now. Joe hadn't been asleep when Nick came in.

"Anyone see you?" Joe asks. There had been a point right at the beginning where it felt like spies, where being illicit was fun. The shine is still there off and on, but mostly off when the doors aren't soundproof.

"Man, you're forgetting," Nick says, reaching out to rub Joe's neck. Joe turns as much as he can to kiss the nob of Nick's wrist, nipping a little. It makes Nick's voice going shaky when he finishes the thought, "I'm good at this."

Pulling Nick down into his bed, Joe thinks that's the crux of the problem right there.

***

Joe tries to sleep in for the novelty, but his body's used to six am wake up calls and it only makes it until eight before demanding coffee. When he goes downstairs, he only sees Elvis sleeping on the couch and Dad on the bluetooth headset talking to their manager. Joe writes on the legal pad next to the computer 'WHERE'S EVERYONE? (MINUS DOG)' and Dad takes the pen and scrawls 'dermatologist appointments'. Joe jerks his thumb to the door and fans out his fingers - back in ten - but Dad's not really looking anymore. Outside the sun is already flare-out bright, and the world is huge for the lack of trees and the color of a headache.

Joe walks half a mile down the road to the weird little convenience store that must have been included in the blue prints of their gated community. It's got the same architecture as everything else. He buys an iced coffee and a naked mango smoothie and fishes a copy of _The Onion_ from the box outside. At a college, _The Onion_ is probably scattered all over the dining hall and you read headlines out loud to your friends on Sunday morning while they groan about being hungover. Joe's performed at university stadiums in deserts but the generic college in his head lives in New Jersey, wooded and unobtrusively shaded. Little paths that meander between buildings and lead you around again to nowhere. Back home, Joe changes into swim trunks and sunglasses that cost three hundred dollars in order to look they look like they came from a gas station. He brings his newspaper to the pool and settles down. He's got serious tanning aspirations this vacation. Nick and Kevin both get blotchy if they're not careful, look like they've caught some tropical disease, but Joe is awesome at tanning.

When he looks up, Kevin's sitting in the chair next to him, squinting, his face freckled red from a blackhead gun. "If that's the measles and you die, I call dibs on your stuff. And delivering the eulogy."

Kevin stretches out under the sun like a cat. "Laugh it up, chump. Mom's dragging you and Nick off to the nutritionist next."

Going to the nutritionist with Nick is mostly an exercise in deflection, in redirecting the conversation from how Nick could lose a foot. Joe can hear Frank shrieking from the driveway, their mother's sotto voice that from the very tone is asking for five minutes of quiet. Nick comes into view, opens the gate to the backyard, Frank slung over his shoulder and kicking.

"Hey guys," Nick says. "Have either of you seen Frankie? I can't find him anywhere." Frank squeals with delight and kicks Nick in the chest. Nick grimaces silently. Frankie's getting a little big for this kind of stuff physically if not emotionally.

"Fresh out of luck, man," Joe says. Frank laughs like he's going to throw up and Kevin looks like he's forty years old and thinks this is all adorable.

"Weird," says Nick. "I guess we'll have to look for him. Arrange a search party - oof, okay, that one hurt, you're getting off now." Frank sobers up with a few hiccups and stiffens into dead weight. He slides down Nick's front, stretching out the collar of one of Nick's girl-side-of-American Apparel scoopneck shirts. It pulls tight down Nick's chest. Frankie frowns and points.

"What's that?" He gets a look on his face, confusion and then delight at having cleared it up without outside help. "It's a hickey!"

You got to hand it to Nick, that would have been where Joe threw Frank in the pool. "It's a mosquito bite," Nick says evenly. "Who taught you that word?"

"Mike!" Frank says. Joe feels Kevin staring at him, all the smothering weight of an X-ray blanket. Joe keeps reading the same article over and over, the crest of his cheekbones heating up like he has a fever.

"Who's Mike?" Nick's asking.

"He holds the pole!"

"The pole?"

"You know." Frank mimes holding out something above his head. "The pole that makes things louder."

"The boom mic operator?" Joe guesses. His voice comes out funny.

"The pole!" Frank insists. It's hard to tell whether that's confirmation or not.

"I think," Nick says. "It's snack time." Frank lets himself be ushered into the house. It's just Joe and Kevin out in the yard now, baking.

And when Kevin finally talks his voice is a little cracked as if from the heat. "Funny what kids pick up, huh."

Joe blinks sweat from his eyes, glad Kev can't see it. "Yeah."

"It's probably better if Mom and Dad don't find out he knows that word," Kevin says carefully. "It'd just upset them."

Joe's fingers loosen their clench on the newspaper, which crinkles too loudly. "Yeah."

"Do you even _remember_ what it's like to be sixteen?!" Kevin says and it's abrupt and angry. It disorients Joe maybe more than it should.

"Yeah, of course I do." he says. Momentum had already been underway when Joe was sixteen. It hadn't been for Kevin. And Nick - talented, insightful Nick - is often a different species from adolescent altogether.

Kevin just stares at Joe hard. The two of them, they're Irish twins. It's funny how things play out. When Kev breaks the gaze he's twisting his mouth, disgusted. He climbs off the chair and goes to the front door, banging the gate behind him so it ricochets after he's already in the house. He's losing Kevin over this. That should be more of an incentive than it is. Joe goes inside himself only when his skin feels red and angry at the joints.

Nick's down in the basement in the lounge outside the studio, sitting on a beanbag with his laptop. He's scowling, maybe with concentration. Joe climbs up the back of the beanbag and settle around Nick, legs on either side of his. Nick's back stays rigid at the contact. Not concentration then.

"Whatcha doing?" Joe asks, resting his chin on Nick's shoulder. The screen's tilted at such an angle that Joe can only read it if he squints.

"Making a playlist," Nick says. Joe bends down a little to decipher what's on iTunes. A lot of Weezer and Counting Crows. Nick gets in a sulk and listens to vaguely genre-defying bands that were popular when he was two. He's so weird sometimes.

Joe nudges him. "Hey, don't forget My Name is Jonas." He hums the guitar riff, _nrr nrr nrr nrr nrr, nrr nrr nrr nrr nrr_.

"You only know that song from Guitar Hero," Nick says, like it's a personal failing.

Joe worms his arms around Nick's torso, drops a kiss behind his ear. "I know many things for many reasons." Nick snorts but slowly begins to melt back against him. Joe wonders if Nick can feel the crazy stuttering of Joe's heartbeat through his spine.

***

The thing is Joe is just stupid happy. Maybe mostly the stupid part, though. He feels giddy and drugged and jagged; fully awake for the first time in his life. Joe's not so stupid he can't figure out what that means. He tries to be careful but it's like trying to do something carefully when your hands have gone numb; it's hard to judge and what do you really care? Besides he usually relies on Nick to display caution, but Nick has been really _shitheaded_ about that lately. Just totally dropping the ball. Like, Joe needs hair wax and tries Nick's bathroom. The shower's running, but Joe's not really thinking about it. He's on a mission. Nick's shower is huge like all their showers, two heads and a marble bench, like for if you get exhausted halfway through shampooing your hair. The glass door is fogged up and he can only see the blurry outline of Nick through it when he looks at his reflection in the mirror, like Joe has his glasses off. Joe busies himself with the medicine cabinet, but Nick opens the stall door and sticks his head out. His curls are plastered dark to his head like a greaser or a seal. Different versions of slick. Nick's tilts his head curiously. "Joe?"

"Just looking for product," Joe says, opening a drawer. "How many q-tips can you possibly need, Nicholas?"

"They have a lot of uses," Nick says. He's got this new calm voice Joe is learning to recognize, a throaty calm. "Anyway, I don't have any hair stuff here. You can try Kevin." Nothing he said was a dismissal though. Water runs down the contour of his cheek, trickling to other curves and planes Joe tries to avoid. He doesn't want to try Kevin. Joe doesn't turn around, just watches in the mirror Nick watching him. The shower sounds like a canned effect and Joe's getting hard.

"Nick," he says warningly, but Nick just quirks half a grin. The Joe in the mirror looks like such a douche, kind of panicked with his hair frizzing from the steam. This would be such a bad idea.

"Joe," Nick says. "There's a drought warning. Don't waste water. Why do you hate the environment, Joe?"

And Joe laughs. Because when he least expects it, Nick is really funny. Funny and brave, laying it all out like this, and his skin isn't anything Joe's seen before in his life, almost pearly. Joe swallows, locks the door bathroom, and struggles to get his shirt off. He only sees how still Nick was holding himself once he slouches against the door. Joe feels weirdly self-conscious kicking off his pants even though Nick's seem him in all manner of undignified nudity countless times. But he still fights the urge to cup his junk as he slips into the shower. That's what he hates most about this. It's changed the rules, made everything complicated.

Nick runs the water cooler than Joe likes it, but Nick himself is warm when Joe presses a hand below his collarbone. Nick is taller than him now by a good half inch, wider too. Solid through the chest while Joe's still built like a greyhound. Nick makes a noise in the back of his throat and Joe goes a little crazy, pushing him out of the spray and practically climbing him to get to his mouth.

Nick takes his weight, holds him steady. He grins against Joe's mouth and then bites his lower lip. He's slippery with the water and his skin feels like the skin of a nectarine. They slip and skitter together until Joe ends up slammed up against the wall, wedged on the bench. He's suddenly getting what this thing is for. Nick's squashed on top of him, kissing determinedly as Joe tries to get out, "Nick... Nicky... need to readjust here."

Nick finally pulls back enough so Joe can resettle and not be sitting on his own balls. Nick is flushed and his mouth looks a little bruised, water dripping from his chest onto Joe's. "You okay now?"

Joe lets his head loll back against the wall, feels himself smile. He bets he seems kind of stoned. "I'm real good."

Nick grins as sudden and blinding as a flashbulb. This can't be that sick if it gets Nick to look this happy. "Good." Nick skims the back of his knuckles against Joe's stomach just above his navel, light enough to make Joe shiver. "We've got about fifteen minutes, I think. What do you want to do?"

Joe wants a blowjob. He really, really badly wants a blowjob. Nick's usually game for them, but still determined and wobbly like a colt learning to run. Not that that metaphor isn't all kinds of effed-up. But still, Nick's unsteady and it's hard enough to breathe through your nose in a shower as it is. Joe lets his smile slide into something sly and rubs his thumbs into Nick's hip crease, coaxing him forward. "This, I was thinking," he says. Nick sucks in a breath when their cocks bump together, when Joe takes Nick's hand and wraps it around them both, holding them together. "This works."

This part Nick's proficient at after years of making Joe _lose his goddamn mind_ in the next bed, the next room, the next hotel suite over. Joe slides his arms over Nick's shoulders, lets them dangle over his back as he draws Nick in close. Nick's panting a little now, looking slightly wolfish as he mouths at whatever parts of Joe's face he can reach. He works them together, eyes closing just before he comes. Joe feels so full with this. Just this. Joe floats along, floats back into kissing Nick, until he realizes Nick is shivering and the water's gone cold. He flicks the side of his head. "You. Out."

The minute Nick turns off the shower, Joe's scrambling for a towel and Nick's blowdryer. "Can you get them downstairs?"

Nick nods, looking oddly big-eyed as he yells over the hairdryer's dull roar. "Yeah, in the studio. I've been kind of working on a song anyway."

"Really?" Joe clicks it off, drawling out his vowels. "Is it about me?" When Nick kind of mutters and just works water out of his ear, Joe almost drops his brush. "Oh man, it's so about me, isn't it?"

Nick goes red and cinches his towel tight around his waist like it's a gun holster. "Shut up," he mumbles and then he's out the door. The Joe in the mirror now looks kind of like a deranged cartoon character, all fiendish glee even when he's torturing himself by yanking back on his skinny jeans while still wet. Life is awesome. Joe is a _rock star_ and life is awesome.

The high fades though the minute he walks through the door and it hits him that if they lay whatever Nick's working on down as a track, Joe's going to have to sing it. He's going to have to perform it in front of crowds.

Nick has been crap at being worried and so it's fallen to Joe, who's not used to it and often can't control the shape of an anxious thought. But if he figures that when it goes, it will go down like this: Nick will be asked a lot of careful questions. He'll be treated as a gentle thing, like after his diagnosis. He'll have a new and frightening aspect of himself exposed to the family and interpreted as a vulnerability. Over Dad's protests, he'll be sent to a million hours of therapy. Photographers be damned, the Jonases will start going back to church. All of that is mostly okay and, honestly, probably what Nick needs.

Joe will be sent to a Christian rehabilitation boot camp. In Mexico. They'll spin it as rehab if they have to. It'd be a lot less messy and sordid if he _had_ been doing coke with the cast of _Gossip Girl_. Not that he'd be invited to one of their parties.

Drawing attention to himself is one of Nick's innate and awkward gifts. When Joe pokes his head out of Nick's room the upstairs is empty and Joe's footstep click like a metronome. Elvis greets him at the stairwell. He's a shedder and not allowed near the studio equipment. He sticks his snout between Joe's knees, a typical casual greeting, idly waving his plume of a tail. Joe bends down to rub his ears. "Leighton Meester doesn't know what she's missing." It's hard to say whether Elvis agrees.

***

Once back in New Jersey, Joe had been listening to his father give a sermon on the second coming. He had been more interested in the dust motes swirling through the church and glinting gold in the light brief as a soap bubble before winking back into something ordinary. Kevin was sitting a few rows over with friends and Nick had been young enough that he had been allowed to bring a toy, some puzzle thing he wouldn't let Joe help with. Joe couldn't get comfortable on the pew and Mom kept measuring out her warning look. Joe already knew the story of the rapture so he wasn't paying much attention to his father droning on about devastation, how life without God could only be defined by emptiness. And it hit Joe that whether he repented or not, there were always going to be things like dust motes and dry socks, the tiniest details in the huge array of life that were beautiful and maybe good even if no one paid attention to them. Joe watched the Discovery Channel; there were monsters at the bottom of the ocean and what would they care about the apocalypse. Joe doesn't think much about whether he believes in Jesus, but he decided a while ago not to live his life cringing at the promise of him. He's never told anyone this for fairly obvious reasons, but he doesn't think he's living a lie or anything. Joe is used to feeling out of step with his parents anyway.

Around five, Joe finds a fedora at the bottom of his closet and wears it with a skinny scarf and an undershirt _he_ had stolen from Kevin. Kevin himself is in his room. He looks up from watching his DVDs of _How I Met Your Mother_ when Joe raps his knuckles against the doorframe. "You want to go out tonight? Do something?"

Kev seems surprised but unguarded. "Yeah, okay." Joe himself would have been wondering about the catch. He's never worked out whether Kevin is intensely forgiving or just desperate, but either way it makes him a little too easy to manipulate.

They leave after dinner. Mom gives them the bodyguard-less vacation spiel: no getting photographed with girls, pint glasses or red cups, call if they'll be home later than one. Nick and Frankie are playing Egyptian Ratscrew and Nick is, like, just hilariously into it, his brow all furrowed and whacking Frank's hand hard enough to leave red marks. He plays it chill, but Nick is the most intensely competitive kid Joe has ever met. If you lose it means you aren't perfect, and Nick hinges his identity on being perfect. He might have plans himself later, Joe didn't ask.

Joe and Kev take one of the SUVs to a smaller venues downtown, spend what feels like an hour trying to find parking. They get seated VIP up on the balcony with their own table. It's a Wednesday so there's just a local band, one of those LA numbers where all the members also act and tend bar and are finishing up their screenplay. They're not too bad though - a little Vampire Weekend but Joe likes Vampire Weekend. He and Kev don't talk much and when they do it's chit-chat or about work. His whole life Joe has generally either surrounded by a throng of people or left alone with Nick, and he's out of practice doing one-on-one with Kevin.

The second to last song of the set, Kev nudges his shoulder. "You want to go backstage, say hi?"

"Not really," Joe says. "You can if you want though."

Kevin slurps at the dregs of his diet Sprite. "It'd give them a real thrill."

Joe raises his eyebrows. "No it wouldn't." And that's something Joe knows from experience, a lot of humiliating trial and error. Other musicians, non-Disney musicians, even non- _famous_ musicians generally aren't that impressed by their family. They're always very polite, which is the opposite of impressed for someone in a band. People like Pete Wentz or Beck don't shake hands and smile blankly at singers whose music they respect. There's always a cool kids table. You can sell out stadiums and socially still be the weird, Christian, homeschooled virgin if those stadiums are full of twelve-year-olds. Eh, fuck 'em. Joe knows he's a good frontman.

The house lights go up and the band starts breaking down their gear. If this were a college, they'd be at a house party in someone's basement and once the equipment was put away they'd play beer pong. A girl would get drunk enough to be charming and hang all over Joe all night and he'd give her his hoodie if she started shivering on their walk back to the dorms.

"How's Dani?" Joe asks, rubbing his finger against the grain of the table.

Kev perks up. "Good. Uh - we were talking earlier about her maybe flying out for the second week we're here."

"Aw, good times. Getting ready for the love-in."

Kevin just rolls his eyes. "So what do you want to do now?"

For the sake of their fledgling truce, Joe isn't going to say 'go home because maybe Nick's in bed and I can smell the back of his neck.' Kevin's really trying here, even Joe can appreciate that. Somehow Kevin gets it too, that none of them really have any choices in this. "I dunno. Where do you meet girls in this city anyway? If you go to a bar they're all just looking to get discovered."

"Guess it depends on what kind of girl you're looking for," Kevin says, but this wasn't a good choice of conversation either. He looks skeptical.

Joe still has this little fantasy. He'll be at a party, a shoot, whatever, and he'll see some girl and he'll know she's all he wants to see for the rest of his life. She'll get his jokes and keep up with him when he's wired and maybe she'll be a little older, a little dangerous. His parents won't really approve, but in comparison it would be so easy, so safe.

"You know what I'm looking for," Joe says, kicking his legs out. "I'm looking for someone who's as funky-fresh style cool as me."

"As you? Try a church picnic," Kevin says. It takes a couple seconds for the corner of Kev's mouth to twitch and then he laughs, hard. And then Joe starts in and the two of them are laughing like a mechanism inside them broke, like they can't even control something as simple as that anymore.

Nick _is_ in bed when they get home and Joe creeps in his room. He makes a little sound in the back of his throat when Joe changes the weight distribution of the bed, spooning him. "Mmrg. Hey?"

Joe's got his eyes closed, nose in Nick's hair, breathing in deep. "Just me."

"I know," Nick says, sounding more awake now. He turns over to face Joe, chin propped up on his elbow, eyes slit but soft. "You and Kev have a good night?"

"It was okay," Joe says. A thought strikes him. "Hey Nick, do you think I'm cool?"

"No," Nick says.

" _Judas_."

Nick settles down with his head pillowed on Joe's chest, one arm slung around him. Even relaxed, Joe can feel the power in that bicep. Joe runs a finger up and down behind the curve of Nick's ear. Nick's cock is getting sluggishly hard pressed against his leg, but nothing feels urgent yet in this space they've created. "I think you'd be cooler if you didn't have your weird middle-child syndrome thing where everyone has to pay attention to you. You try way too hard sometimes."

Joe sighs, staring at the ceiling. He lets his hand rest on the small of Nick's back. "Man. You ever have those moments where it's like - this is not my life."

"This is not my _beautiful_ life," Nick says drowsily, like he's correcting him.

Joe peers down. "What?"

"Same as it ever was," Nick says, toying with Joe's happy trail now.

" _What_?"

Nick sighs. "You're hopeless." But he burrows down towards the end of the mattress anyway.

***

Joe has vague dreams about nothing he can remember, but the lingering dregs of them seem significant when he wakes up. And then he's hitting his head on the floor and the carpet is rubbing the skin off his elbows. This takes a second to register: Nick threw him out of bed. "The _hell_ , Nicky?"

"Shut up!" Nick hisses, his face appearing over the side of the bed, gripping the mattress white-knuckled. "You fell asleep, idiot! We have to be up in like five minutes!"

Joe blinks, eyelids sticky. "Well, you clearly fell asleep too."

Nick doesn't even acknowledge his defensive play in order to mock it. He's scrambling out of the bed himself, throwing Joe's clothes from last night in his closet. Joe rescues his boxers, tugs them on. Nick's panic is seeping into his rebooting mind, but Nick is also naked and bending over so Joe's dick is unsure what direction to take his morning wood. Nick shoves a pair of socks into his hands and Joe squints down at them. "Uh."

"Anyone sees you in the hallway, you were in my room borrowing socks," Nick says. It's one of those mornings where Nick's bedhead looks intentional, seductive. His expression is pinched and drained but adult. All that world-weary competence. It's like standing at the feet of Nick Jonas: the boy king. Joe feels so much tenderness for him it almost hurts, the way an infection can feel tender to the touch.

"And that's not weird at all, that I'd come in here at six thirty in the morning in my boxers to steal your socks," Joe tries to point out.

"Uh _yeah_ , Joe," Nick says. "You used to do that all the time."

Well, that's fairly sobering. Joe is still processing the implications as he walks through the door and straight into his mother. He has this problem where in the course of a conversation Joe sees a dialogue fork, splitting off between the nice thing to say and the funny thing to say and almost every single time Joe will go for funny and have trouble understanding why people are mad. So that's sort of what's going on right now. Joe could be gripped with terror, but this is like a French farce. Joe's always had a lot of respect for good comedic timing even when his heart is trying to claw out of his throat. "Morning, Mom."

"Morning, baby," she says. She's dressed nice today, not camera ready, but nice in the way she used to dress pre-cameras. "Is Nick up?"

"I sort of woke him up, yeah," Joe says. "Borrowing socks."

She shakes her head a little. "Honestly, Joseph. It's not like you don't have enough of your own."  
.  
Joe's life is often grueling and horrible so this can't be the worst moment of it ever, but it's certainly seeded into the finals. "Nick's are better."

"You two," Mom says, rueful and fond. She looks so pretty this morning and she's such a good mom. She's sacrificed so much for them. And even if she'll never know it, Joe is still basically ruining everything she's ever done to build her moral, happy family. He wants to hug her, but his hard-on is still dying down and he probably doesn't smell entirely of himself yet. Instead he pecks her on the cheek and bolts down the hall before she can ask what it was for.

***

Joe gets his blowjob the next day when Nick shoves him in the walk-in closet with the locks on the inside, sort of a makeshift panic room. Joe feels a fluttery thrill low in his belly when Nick bites at his neck, tugs off his shirt, because Nick had been withdrawn and touchy all afternoon and this must have been why. Nick must have been desperate and shut down because otherwise some of it would have leaked through. Joe fits a hand around Nick's ass, smooths the other one down Nick's back, says, "Hey, it's okay." He smiles when Nick just growls and starts working on his pants.

Nick's sloppy, keeps nicking Joe with his teeth, his chin getting wet. His mouth around Joe's dick is the most obscene thing that's ever been and Joe has to shut his eyes against the force of it. The image lingers though, pulses behind Joe's eyes with every jerk of Nick's head until Joe has to shove his hand in his own mouth to keep from crying out. He does the same for Nick, returning the favor. They end up on the floor, Joe between Nick's sprawled legs, cradling the weight of Nick's cock in his mouth, and when Nick's noises go from soft and rhythmic to something wilder Joe shoves his fingers between Nick's teeth down to the joints, wincing when Nick bites down, when Nick comes.

Afterwards Joe rests his head low on Nick's belly, his breath rustling Nick's pubic hair. He's really just enjoying looking at Nick's dick right now, almost in this peaceful way like he's birdwatching. He hears Nick clear his throat and then Nick tugs at Joe's hair. "Hey, we could go skinny dipping in the pool tonight."

Joe spiders two fingers up and down Nick's inner thigh. "Yeah, sure." Of course they can't, Nick knows that. They aren't going to. Sometimes he just comes up with an absurd hypothetical, a wistful little mental vacation.

Joe crawls up Nick's torso, kisses his throat. "Hey. You still working on that song?"

Nick skates his gaze away uncomfortably. "Not really... it's kinda... I was playing a little of it for Dad and Kevin..."

"It's cool," Joe says, resting his chin on Nick's chest, rubbing Nick's neck. "I get it."

"It was sort of weird," Nick says, changing the subject. "I was afraid I was going to chip my tooth on your ring or something."

"What?" Joe asks before he remembers. Nick's looking at him, studying his reaction. He's a smart kid but Joe knows his tricks; Nick's probing carefully, setting up a conversation they're going to have to have one day. But right now when Joe stares at him, Nick just blushes and looks away.

"Did I hurt your hand?" Nick asks.

Joe waggles his fingers in front of Nick's face, red toothmarks not even beginning to fade. "I'm going to tell everyone I got it stuck in a trap trying to save a helpless baby rabbit."

Nick rolls his eyes and knocks them away. "Right. Whatever, Grizzly Adams."

Nick must totally watch _Family Guy_ on the sly, there's no other way he'd make some of the references he busts out with. "Grizzly Adams only wishes he could grow a beard like I can."

Nick snorts and then starts laughing this bubbly fountain of a laugh, covering his mouth with his hand. Joe feels like they could be underground, someplace dark and cool and safe, and Nick's goofy laugh turns it into a grotto. Sometimes moments like this feel more like being in a bomb shelter, claustrophobic and terrifying. But right now Joe can almost picture mosaics, running water. At college... there would never be a situation remotely like this if Joe had gone to college.

Nick finally trails off into a sigh, letting his head fall back. "We should go."

Joe kisses him one last time, Nick following his lead and letting him turn it slow and savory. Just like Joe will probably take his cues from Nick downstairs. It's a constant interplay, all of this. A delicate balance. "Okay," Joe says. "Okay, let's go."


End file.
